Alexandra-Therese Keining

Based on an award-winning Swedish
young-adult novel, Alexandra-Therese
Keining's Girls Lost is a skilfully crafted tale
of sexual confusion and sexual awakening,
with a clever supernatural twist. Presented
in the allegorical mode of films and TV series
like Ginger Snaps and Buffy the Vampire
Slayer — which link supernatural powers
to puberty and the emergence of adolescent
desire — Girls Lost is a kind of transgender
Twilight (albiet much edgier) in its portrait
of three adolescent outsiders who undergo
a startling transformation.

Kim, Bella, and Momo are inseparable
friends who are brutally persecuted by
their classmates. One night after another
bad day at school, the girls get drunk and
decide to taste the strange juice oozing from
a mysterious flower that was sent to the
horticulturally inclined Momo by mistake.
Passing out almost immediately after imbibing
the liquid, the girls wake up some time
later — as boys. Intrigued by the changes
to their bodies and surging with a new
self-confidence, the friends set out to discover
what it's like to live in a man's world.
But excitement turns to potential danger
when one of the trio begins to embrace her
new identity too enthusiastically, and unexpected
feelings suddenly emerge.

Moving effortlessly from the comic (most
notably in the scene where the girls first
discover their new bodies) to the dramatic,
from the outright fantastic to the incisively
political, Keining explores all the possibilities
of her almost absurdly rich scenario.
Boasting brilliant performances from its
young stars, Girls Lost is that all-too-rare
item: something new under the sun.